Tag Archives: Deepwater Horizon

Sometimes, there is absolutely nothing worse than being proven right. It is the one thing you dreaded. Ever since the horrendous Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, I and many others warned against using the toxic chemical called Corexit arguing that it would do more damage than good. The potential evidence of harm, or lack of evidence of its safety, was clear for everyone from BP to the US Government to see to if they had bothered to look. Nearly one million gallons of the dispersant was dropped by air and a further 770,000 gallons injected into the well head to try and disperse in excess of 200 million gallons of oil that was spilt by BP in the Gulf of Mexico. >click to read<13:21

A U.S. government plan to expand offshore drilling in its waters could give oil and gas companies access to ecologically sensitive areas, including the American half of Georges Bank, a prospect that makes one Nova Scotia fish processor very nervous. Georges Bank is a large elevated area of sea floor that separates the Gulf of Maine from the Atlantic Ocean and is an important breeding ground for several fish species. It’s an area far too important to the fishing industry to be endangered by drilling, according to Nathan Blades, the general manager of Sable Fish Packers on Cape Sable Island in southwest Nova Scotia. click here to read the story 13:35

The chemicals that were used to break up oil from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon blowout have long been suspected of sickening workers who responded to the disaster. Now a federal health agency is backing some of their assertions. The National Institutes of Health this month published a study saying workers exposed to oil dispersants suffered a range of symptoms,,, Two dispersants, Corexit EC9500A and Corexit EC9527A, both manufactured by Nalco Environmental Solutions, were dropped by airplane to break up oil on the water’s surface. It was the first time dispersants had been used on a large scale, and their potential effects on human health and the environment were not known. click here to read the story 09:35

The BP oil spill has faded from the global headlines, but seven years later, the effects on residents of the Gulf Coast and the legal system nationwide are far from over. While the journey has been long and difficult, there are lessons for those injured and their lawyers. The Deepwater Horizon Claim Center will likely shut down this year after paying an estimated $13 billion in individual and business claims for economic and property damages. As it does, payments from related settlements, this time with Halliburton Energy Services Inc., Trans-Ocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling Inc. and other defendants, will start. Thousands of claimants are expected to divide $1.24 billion.,,, Those in the seafood industry received $2.3 billion in compensation for business and economic losses. Of that, $520 million was not paid until late last year, which means some people waited six-and-a-half years to receive all of their money. click here to read the story 11:40

Jeffrey Nelson’s letter of May 9 tries to convey a sense of safety that new technology will bring to offshore drilling. He feels that underwater drilling platforms guided from miles away will somehow prevent oil spills. What he fails to mention is that technology quite often fails. Combine remote control with a platform many miles beneath the surface, and you are asking for disaster. Yet his premise is that if it is underwater and you can’t see it, it must be safe.Consider this: The Deepwater Horizon drilling platform was using proven technology and, according to the government investigation, failed because of human error and gross negligence. No amount of new technology will eliminate causes like that. Click here to read the op-ed 16:58

A man from Cut Off is suing BP, alleging he has suffered severe injuries since he was exposed to crude oil and dispersants while working in oil spill cleanup after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion. Levy Brunet Jr. filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New Orleans. He names BP PLC, BP Exploration and Production and BP America Production Co. as defendants. According to the lawsuit, the defendants chartered Brunet’s commercial fishing and shrimping boat in May 2010 for the Vessel of Opportunity Program to help with cleanup from Deepwater Horizon. The plaintiff worked in the program until October 2010.,, Brunet alleges he was exposed to “massive quantities of crude oil, crude oil vapors, dispersants that were being injected into the well site and/or sprayed onto the surface of the water, other gasses or chemicals being released by the uncontrolled well release, as well as fumes from the burning of all these materials, which caused the release of noxious fumes and/or particles.” click here to read the story 09:52

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was one of the largest environmental disasters in history, releasing roughly 4 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. For Atlantic bluefin tuna, it occurred at the worst time of year, during peak spawning season, when eggs and larval fish that are particularly vulnerable to environmental stressors exist in mass quantity. In a study (click here)published in Nature: Scientific Reports, scientists from Stanford and NOAA provide the best yet analysis of how the 2010 breeding season might have been impacted by the oil spill. Although the spill encompassed a relatively small proportion of the bluefin tuna spawning grounds, which extend throughout the northern Gulf of Mexico, the authors showed the cumulative oiled tuna habitat was roughly 3.1 million square miles, representing the potential for a significant impact on eggs and larval bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico. Read the story here 13:43

The federal indictment of seven people accused of defrauding the BP claims process includes evidence that reads like a script from a movie. Fraud, conspiracy, dead people and a dog filing for a piece of billions in BP money. Those are all allegations spelled out in Thursday’s 95 count indictment. Prosecutors call it the biggest BP disaster identity theft case to date. The indictment alleges among the more than 40,000 client claims submitted, one was for Lucy Lu who turned out to be a dog. Five other names submitted had died before the 2010 oil spill. Read the rest here Seven indicted in largest BP fraud identity theft case to date– Related article here 13:54

The justice department says a settlement to resolve claims against BP for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico deepwater horizon oil spill is ‘historic’. The agreement with the five Gulf States affected is worth billions in civil claims. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch made the announcement at the department of justice Monday: (Loretta Lynch) “Today, I am pleased to announce, that we have secured an historic resolution of our pending claims against BP totaling more than 20-billion dollars, making it the largest settlement with a single entity in American history,,, Read the rest here 09:08

The settlement announcement comes as a federal judge was preparing to rule on how much the British oil giant owed in federal Clean Water Act penalties after millions of gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf. BP was leasing the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010 when it exploded and sank off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 crewmen and releasing some 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf. Read the rest here 12:48

David Rainey, BP’s former vice president for exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, will stand trial in New Orleans, charged with obstructing a congressional investigation in the weeks after the oil spill, the largest in US history. Prosecutors allege he deliberately withheld information about how much oil was being pumped into the Gulf following the explosion at the BP well. Rainey was the second in command at BP’s “unified command center” in Robert, Louisiana, where cleanup and response efforts were coordinated. Read the rest here 09:26

‘We can’t say with 100 per cent certainty that it was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill’, explained Steven Murawski, marine science professor at the University of South Florida, ‘but we can say what it wasn’t. The findings, published in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, were disputed by BP. According to Geoff Morrell, a senior vice president with BP, such lesions ‘have long been observed in the Gulf and have little effect on a species’ health or population.’ <Read more here> 11:34

A new discovery of two additional coral communities showing signs of damage from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill expands the impact footprint of the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The discovery was made by a team led by Charles Fisher, professor of biology at Penn State University. Read more here 08:52

“In the beginning they was all real nice,” said Barry Labruzzo, a 35-year-old shrimper from Slidell, La. Mr. Labruzzo received an emergency payment from Mr. Feinberg’s operation in the early days of the spill, while also putting in a claim for lost business revenue. He was confident he would be paid quickly. “They would tell us we don’t even need a lawyer,” he said. nyt.com Read more here 17:46

Four years after the Deepwater Horizon spill, oil is still washing up on the long sandy beaches of Grand Isle, Louisiana, and some islanders are fed up with hearing from BP that the crisis is over. Jules Melancon, the last remaining oyster fisherman on an island,,, Read more here11:22

“We believe this disaster has greatly impacted the ability of fisheries to spawn. And that’s why they’re not seeing the fisheries they used to. They’re not catching what they used to. We believe that the spawning ability has been greatly impacted,” said Thao Vo, an advocate for fishing families. Read more here wlox 20:02

BP oil spill cleanup will continue, Coast Guard tells state coastal authority – The Coast Guard has scaled back its clean-up response to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but that scale-back is not as extensive as BP indicated in a news release issued Tuesday, an irritated Capt. Thomas Sparks told the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority on Wednesday. Read more here nola.com 09:25

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill struck at the very heart of fish, a new study says. Exposed to millions of gallons of crude, young tuna and amberjack, some of the speediest predators in the ocean, developed heart defects that are likely to limit their ability to catch food. Read more here wapo 09:02

Business-loss claims under a civil settlement related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster do not evidence of causation, the 5th Circuit ruled Monday. This marks the second time that BP failed to sway the court with,,, Read more here courthousenews 11:32

MOBILE, Alabama – Researchers discussed Monday some of the uncertainties and challenges of dealing with the fallout from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill at the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Conference. Read [email protected] 22:56

BP’s Macondo well spilled only 3.26 million barrels of oil during the 87 days that followed the April 20, 2010 blowout that sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, killing 11 workers, a witness for the company testified Thursday. Martin Blunt, an assistant professor of petroleum engineering at Great Britain’s Imperial College, said his estimate takes into account the geology of the area of the Gulf of Mexico where the Macondo reservoir was located, unlike the 5 million or more barrels estimated by expert witnesses for the Justice Department. [email protected] 11:27

Myarklamiss.com – BP has agreed to fund approximately $340 million in restoration projects for Louisiana. This investment is part of the $1 billion that BP agreed to invest for early restoration of damaged natural resources resulting from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. continued

BP is doing exactly what big corporations are expected to do, Muth said: Launch a massive public relations campaign to show that everything’s back to normal on the Gulf Coast. Some things are, he said, but the extent of the damage remains an unknown. continued

In July 2010, the oil spill caused by the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion fouled beaches and wetlands, killed wildlife, and ruined seafood businesses. Nearly three years later, as the civil trial against BP begins, those who live and work in the area continue to feel the disaster’s effects. Transcript and audio here

In the movie, marine toxicologist Riki Ott summarized what the oil industry learned from the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989: “We have to control the images. We’ve got to minimize the appearance of damages. That will limit our liability.”
That’s what BP did in the Gulf. “If you disperse it, you don’t see it,” said shrimper George Barisich, who attended the screening of “Dirty Energy” in Port Huron on Jan. 19. “As they dispersed it more and more, the less people saw, the more they forgot about it.” Read more here

But, hey, maybe it’s a coincidence. What could be causing oil slicks around an abandoned, decaying exploded oil rig? Could be anything. The Gulf’s three-eyed fish must be loving their new permanent neighbor. Read More

Lead author of the report, Doctor Jane Lubchenko, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was a key advisor to Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson when she made the decision, shortly after the blowout, to allow them to use dispersants underwater. “It was our judgment that use of dispersants would help the oil be naturally biodegraded more naturally, and that certainly seems to have been the case” Lubchenko said. http://www.alaskapublic.org/2012/12/12/report-dispersants-used-after-blowout-had-few-ill-effects/

NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?

While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here

With almost $10-million in funding raised from private donors, corporations and non-profits, the Pacific Salmon Foundation has started a salmon research project unlike anything the government Read More »